The seven slayings covered by the indictments include the deaths of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, teenage best friends whose bodies were found feet apart in Brentwood last year

The bodies of at least five young people, including two teenage best friends, were found in Brentwood over a six-week period last year.

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The bodies of at least five young people, including two teenage best friends, were found in Brentwood over a six-week period last year

Authorities had believed the slayings were connected to MS-13 gang activity, but no arrests had been made in the months-old case until today

Police have arrested more than 100 known MS-13 gang members on a variety of charges as part of a larger takedown

Authorities will announce the federal indictments of several alleged MS-13 gang members on murder and other charges in connection with the slayings of seven people, including two teenage best friends, in the crime-plagued town of Brentwood, according to a high-ranking police source familiar with the investigation.

The source told NBC 4 New York that FBI and Suffolk police carried out joint raids at multiple locations known to be connected to the notorious Salvadoran MS-13 gang Thursday morning and arrested at least four people. More arrests were possible.

Additional details are expected to be released at a noon news briefing. The source tells NBC 4 New York the indictments will include charges of murder and other crimes in the deaths of seven people in the small Long Island community, including teenage best friends Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas.

Mickens' brutally beaten body was found on a tree-lined street in Brentwood Sept. 13, a day before her 16th birthday. A day later, the beaten body of Cuevas, her lifelong friend, was discovered in the wooded backyard of a nearby home. Investigators had suspected the young girls -- best friends with a passion for basketball -- were victims of gang violence but the cases had gone unsolved prior to Thursday's development.

The bodies of Mickens and Cuevas were found during a terrifying six-week period for the community, during which police also discovered the remains of Oscar Acosta, 19, Miguel Garcia-Moran, 15, and 18-year-old Jose Pena-Hernandez. All five were students at Brentwood High School. Acosta and Garcia-Moran had been missing for several months before their bodies were found near Long Island Rail Road tracks Sept. 26. Pena-Hernandez, who was found dead in early October, was a known MS-13 member, officials said.

Over the last few months, Suffolk authorities have arrested or re-arrested more than 130 MS-13 members on a variety of charges as part of a larger takedown, though none had been charged with the students' killings. Many of the suspects were in the state and federal system already.

Suffolk Police Commissioner Timothy Sini is expected to say Thursday the latest arrests are not the end of the investigation into MS-13, but a milestone in the department's continuing effort to eradicate gang violence.

The international MS-13 gang originated in California, then spread across the country, with a particularly heavy presence on Long Island, in Queens and in parts of northern New Jersey. Many of its estimated 70,000 members are undocumented immigrants who have been deported after arrests on charges including drug and human trafficking, murder and racketeering.

Police Step Up Fight Against Gangs in Brentwood

Police on Long Island say they're making progress in the fight against gangs by putting pressure on the streets. Natalie Pasquarella has more from Brentwood on how officers are targeting criminals to rid of gangs for good.

(Published Monday, Jan. 16, 2017)

The group has been blamed for at least 30 killings on Long Island since 2010.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.